Seasonal recipe: Apple cranberry sauce

Throw apples, cranberries and a few other ingredients in the slow cooker in the morning and come home to a heavenly smell and an almost finished side dish.

Mon, Nov 02 2009 at 7:20 PM EST

Apple Cranberry Sauce

Tonight I made the first chicken potpie of the season. Usually with chicken potpie I serve sautéed apples or jellied cranberry sauce (stop cringing). Tonight, I served apple cranberry sauce that I made in the slow cooker. I threw all the ingredients together, turned the slow cooker on low, left the house for the day, and came home to an amazing smelling house. It made a great complement to the potpie.

I saw a recipe for apple cranberry sauce yesterday on Simply Recipes and decided I needed to adapt it for the slow cooker. I had Molly Delicious apples and cranberries in the fridge that I had bought at the farmers market Saturday morning. The original recipe called for baking apples so I reduced the amount of sugar to accommodate for the sweeter apples. I also reduced the amount of water because food cooked in a slow cooker retains most of its water.

Ingredients

4 pds Molly Delicious apples (or similar sweet apple)
1½ c fresh cranberries (can use frozen)
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ c white sugar
¼ c brown sugar
¼ c water
½ tsp salt

Time Estimates

Prep time: 10 min

Cook time: 6 hr

Total time: 6 hr 10 min

Directions

Peel, core, and roughly chop the apples.
Combine chopped apples with the rest of the ingredients in the slow cooker. Mix well.
Cook on low for 6 hours or until apples and cranberries are very mushy.
Mash with a potato masher, push through a sieve, or use a food mill to turn it into the consistency you want.
Serve warm or cold.

Yield

Makes about 6 servings

My notes

Feel free to start with the least amount of sugar you want. You can always add sugar towards the end if you taste it and think it needs more. As long as the mixture is still hot, the sugar will melt into it.
This recipe could easily be doubled and most likely would need to be to serve it for more than 6 people.
Serve with turkey, chicken, or pork dinners or eat by itself as a snack or breakfast.
This would make a great Thanksgiving side dish and can be made several days ahead of time. You could even make it now, freeze it, and take out two days before Thanksgiving to thaw.

Can you think of other dishes you could serve this with?